The Frederick Sieber Lab studies the impact of sedation on geriatric surgical patients—especially those undergoing orthopaedic or pelvic procedures—with the goal of preventing postoperative delirium. We are using electroencephalography to investigate the effect of sedation depth during spinal anesthesia. We are also working to determine the effects of using propofol for sedation in elderly patients as well as the effects of robotics and surgical positioning on cerebral blood flow.

The APL Health Technologies program's functional restoration focus area includes two portfolios with particular relevance in neurology. The first focuses on motor restoration, using teams with expertise in robotics, microsensors, haptics, artificial intelligence and brain-machine interfaces. One set of projects, currently sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Henry Jackson Foundation, centers on a bionic arm technology that integrates with bone and muscle in amputee patients, restoring a variety of normal functions to the patient like cooking, folding clothing, hand shaking, and hand gestures. This portfolio explores direct brain control of the bionic limb, through work led by Dr. Nathan Crone of Johns Hopkins Neurology and Dr. Pablo Celnik of Johns Hopkins Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Another set of related work aims to restore motor function by better understanding and using brain signals through brain-machine interfaces. This work is current...ly funded by the National Science Foundation and industry partners. Also in the functional restoration focus area is the vision restoration portfolio. In a partnership with Second Sight and the Mann Fund, the work aims to enhance function of a bionic eye, which couples a retinal implant with a computer vision system to restore vision in blind individuals with retinitis pigmentosa. Current work in the human-machine teaming focus area includes a portfolio that is building artificial intelligence systems that improve radiologic and ophthalmic diagnostics. Another portfolio, currently focused in the surgical setting, enhances the physician's ability to visualize and manipulate the physical world, such as with orthopaedic surgery.view more

The Laboratory for computational Motor Control studies movement control in humans, including healthy people and people with neurological diseases.
We use robotics, brain stimulation and neuroimaging to study brain function. Our long-term goals are to use mathematics to understand: 1) the basic function of the motor structures of the brain including the cerebellum, the basal ganglia and the motor cortex; and 2) the relationship between how our brain controls our movements and how it controls our decisions.

The goals of the Vikram Chib Lab are to understand how the nervous system organizes the control of movement and how incentives motivate our behaviors.
To better understand neurobiological control, our researchers are seeking to understand how motivational cues drive our motor actions.
We use an interdisciplinary approach that combines robotics with the fields of neuroscience and economics to examine neuroeconomics and decision making, motion and force control, haptics and motor learning, image-guided surgery and soft-tissue mechanics.